If You're Thinking of Living in: Greenlawn

By BRET R. SENFT

Published: February 9, 1992

THE hamlet of Greenlawn has always had a low profile. In 1653, when a group of settlers bought a large tract from the Matinecock Indians, the part that later became Greenlawn was included as back-pasture lands, which the settlers called Old Fields.

And when the Long Island Rail Road opened a station in Old Fields in 1868 -- calling it Greenlawn -- it did so primarily to serve the resort town of Centerport to the north. Although an 1880 painting by a local artist shows a green lawn from the tracks to what is now the Greenlawn Hardware Store, Carol Bloomgarden, a trustee of the Greenlawn-Centerport Historical Association, says "nobody knows how Greenlawn got its name."

Family farms of hundreds of acres characterized the area in the 19th century, with cabbage and cucumbers (for use by pickle makers) the favored cash crop. Development around the railroad included an opera house built in 1908; it burned down the next year in a fire that also destroyed a hotel and the fire station. Only the firehouse was rebuilt, and to this day Greenlawners must go elsewhere for entertainment.

"No movie theaters, no bowling alleys," said Richard Miltner, a lifetime resident who runs a repair garage. "The sidewalks roll up at 6 o'clock."

Real estate development began after 1945 with the sale of farmland. Huntington Town zoning mandated a variety of lot sizes and open space. There are severaldevelopments, with properties ranging from three-bedroom ranch houses and small Cape Cods on quarter-acre lots, selling for $130,000 to $150,000, to four-bedroom colonials, farm ranches and splanches (split level/ranch combination) on one-acre lots that go for $300,000 to $400,000.

Smaller, older homes clustered in town on 50- by 100-foot lots sell for $140,000. In a wooded area north of the tracks where individual homes, rather than developments, have gone up, there are converted vacation bungalows that sell for $110,000 and custom homes on one-acre sites that go for $400,000.

"This is not Levittown, where there was a one-shot design," said Janet Broomfield, broker with Prudential Long Island Realty on East Main Street in Huntington. "There are pockets of different areas all over Greenlawn."

Felix K. Jackson, a vice president at Citibank in Manhattan, and his wife, Dawn Vendryes-Jackson, a Citibank real estate service officer, moved from Brooklyn three years ago to a $400,000 four-bedroom splanch with an in-ground pool.

Aside from finding a house that "had everything we were looking for in the Huntington area," Mr. Jackson, said, he found the "cultural diversity appealing."

"You have Jews, Italians, blacks," he said. "It's not just one ethnic group."

The Jacksons stagger their commuting schedules to accommodate their 3-year-old son's day-care. "I drop my son off at Rainbow Chimes, and she picks him up in the evening," Mr. Jackson said.

AT the Rainbow Chimes center on Little Plains Road (in a former K-6 building sold to the Developmental Disabilities Institute in 1988) fees range from $150 a week for infants to $43 for after-school-only children up to grade 4.

Mr. Jackson said his wife took a CPR course at the Harborfields Public Library, which also offers storytelling sessions, parent-child workshops and art, dance and health programs and courses for the elderly. It also houses the historical association, with its book and picture collection.

In 1989 the historical association bought the Suydam House Homestead, circa 1730, at the corner of Centerport Road and Route 25A, and in 1991 built a barn/museum on the property. The museum, which has 18th- and 19th-century farm wagons, tools and furnishings, is free and open Sunday afternoons from May to October.

Every October, the historical association celebrates the community's past with a Pickle Festival at the library. Dill, Jerusalem, mustard and other varieties, made and packaged by association members as it was done 100 years ago, can be tasted.

The only park within the 3.8-square-mile hamlet is the 14.5-acre Greenlawn Memorial Park. It has a basketball court/ skating rink, a standard baseball diamond, three 60-foot diamonds, two small-fry fields where the littlest would-be ball stars can do infield practice, and a playground that is to be renovated this spring.

There are two school districts: Harborfields, encompassing the hamlet and northwest into Centerport, and Elwood, to the southeast into East Northport and Commack. Harborfields has 2,500 students in three schools, Thomas J. Lahey Elementary on Pulaski Road, Old Fields Middle School on Old Fields Road, and Harborfields High, also on Pulaski Road.

The district has two long-term goals, supported by staff development and major purchases of equipment and materials: An integrated language arts program, and technology education, utilizing computers and videodisc equipment to facilitate K-12 learning.

There is an advance-placement program and college credit courses. One-third of high school students participate in the marching band. There is an active foreign language exchange program with Russian teachers and students.